Day 1 - Sabbatical (n.) - 🌞 Series
Took a 1 year sabbatical. What's the point? (🌞 Sabbatical Series Day 1 -7)
Sabbatical [suh-bat-i-kuhl]
noun.
: a break or change from a normal routine (as of employment)
: any extended period of leave from one's customary work, especially for rest, to acquire new skills or training, etc.
April 2024
My friends found me at our best friend’s Wedding, hiding, face planted in the grass alone. At first they thought I was dead, but quickly they started laughing and taking pictures. I was snoring against the grass.
Jetlagged, pale, and desperately needed sun and a nap. This was right after the last big conference in Dubai & 30+ hour flight to San Francisco. There was a historical storm in Dubai that flooded the entire city up to the waist level. I almost missed my flight and my best friend’s wedding.
Between a failed relationship, traveling back and forth from Asia to US, and major difference in opinion with the founder of the company that I was leading, I decided to stop. I stopped taking any salaries from all of my roles that I had, and slowly transitioned into an advisory role to have more time.
Time is all we have.
Time to think. Time to sleep. Time to eat. Time to not collapse at my friend’s wedding again.
I was so f*cking tired. I took 1-2 month off to cool my head. Started to think about what’s next.
The big question that I wanted to answer was unfortunately the hardest question in the world.
What’s the purpose of life?
This is a ten-thousand year old question that every human has asked themselves after they get past the survival needs. After we have food and shelter, what more do we want?
No AI or therapist could answer this question for me. No amount of self-help books can solve this problem.
“You are on your own.” - thanks, God or Universe or whatever is out there. I heard it loud and clear.
So I found 2 easier questions that could, maybe, get me closer.
#1 Where do I want to live?
“If I live with penguins in Antarctica, I can’t really go surf on the beach.”
Okay that’s a very extreme example, but it’s clear.
Where to live affects how I live.
#2 How do I spend more time w/ family & friends
“Money buys time. Time to do what? Make more money!?“
Yeah then I’m in an infinite loop and next thing I see is death. This is dark, but it’s true.
The time that we buy back with money, should be spent on things that we really like.
For me they are moments with friends and family.
Sam Altman on the best decision of his career:
It's an incredibly privileged thing to be able to do this, but if you are in the position between jobs where you can take a year off, I highly recommend it.
I think it was like one of the two or three best career things that I ever did. In that year, I read many dozens of textbooks, I learned about fields that I had been interested in. I didn't have any idea that they were all going to come together in the way they did, but I learned a lot about nuclear engineering. Al was starting to work, so I learned a lot about Al. I learned about synthetic biology. I learned about investing. That was the year that I learned about investing, well, I had made maybe four angel investments before this. But I was like, all right, l'm going to get serious about this and try it and see if I like it.
I traveled around a lot. I kind of got a much more of a feel for what the rest of the world is like. I met people who were working on all sorts of different things who were nice enough to talk to me. I badly needed time to reconnect with my friends and family. I just got caught up on life. And I just sort of helped people, I had unlimited time, right? So if I met someone interesting who seemed good and needed help, I would just help them. And they would teach me stuff or they would offer me the chance to invest in their startup later.
And I left myself unscheduled. So l'd like at the drop of a hat, I could fly to another country for a conference. And I started doing all this random stuff. And out of all of it, almost all of it didn't work out. But the seeds were planted for things that worked in deep ways later.
- “Taking a sabbatical”
Summer 2024 (2 months in)
The whole world is a fan of ChatGPT these days, and Sam’s quote on 1 year sabbatical went viral. He took one right before he started OpenAI that led us to ChatGPT.
”What a great idea - Sabbatical!
Maybe I will take one when I turn 35 in 2026!
Maybe when I have a family and kids and they are in school (I don’t even have a girlfriend or a cat).
Maybe…not
For now..I’ll keep traveling to see friends and explore where I want to live…”
Timeline:
San Francisco, CA - Best Friend’s wedding (April 2024)
Austin, TX - Start of the trip / a close friend let me dog-sit and stay at her place
NYC, NY - Family event (sister’s fashion event w/ Samsung)
We recreated a photo in Mexico City with her designer clothes. 19 years later. Buenos Aires, Argentina - Exploration. Learning. Scouting areas & apartments
São Paulo, Brazil - See Friends. Learning. Scouting areas & apartments
Miami, FL - Family
Boston, MA - Close friend’s wedding + Staying w/ Best Friend of 20 years +
Beautiful Bostonian Wedding Alaska - 4th of July - 4 day salmon fishing trip. Found 3 close friends and planned it last minute. Caught total 40+ salmon, ate 20 lbs of salmon in 4 days. Sent 20 lbs of frozen salmon to friends and family.
Bucket list checked Amsterdam / Germany / Denmark / Norway - 2 crazy friends convinced me to join their “Poles of Inconvenience Road Trip” in a tiny yellow customized car.
The slogan was 50/50. Came from this video and an inside joke that we had from the time we spent together in Tulum in 2021. I didn’t share this with my mom of course.
Stockholm, Sweden - Scandinavia! Learning about socialist society and culture
Hard to top summer time Stockholm. Vilnius, Lithuania - Baltics Countries. Fintech boom. Post USSR change
Vilnius is a must visit. I could live here. Mexico City, Mexico - Move out - closing the chapter. I will miss the tacos.
Seoul, Korea - Exploration & Learning about Gambling / Creator industry
Singapore - Exploration & Learning about Telegram
Dubai, UAE - Close Friends & Learning about Telegram
Bali, Indonesia - 30 days of monk mode. Learning about Balinese culture
Singapore - Exploration & Learning about stablecoins
Cancelled my flight to Brasil - Stayed in Bali.
I’m quite happy with how many of my friends and family that I saw in these 6 months. It’s clear - to be able to spend more time with them, I need freedom and, of course, some level of income, but it’s not Bugatti / Lamborghini money let’s be honest.
I used my credit card points to fly for free from Boston to Alaska to Amsterdam. All these flights total don’t cost more than a few thousand - Less than $5,000 for sure. Anyone can save up over time.
Freedom is the hard part. Location freedom. Time freedom. This means having total control over what I do and where I do it. Easily said than done.
Back to the other question
“My friends & families are everywhere. Where do I live..for the rest of my life!?”
I don’t even know where the world will be in 1 year with all this AI stuff.
So I narrowed it down:
“where to live for the next 5 years.” - much better.
New Question
A new friend asked - “What are you doing?”
“nothing.” - I lied.
I wasn’t spending every waking hour drinking, touring museums, eating with my friends. No one has that much time to spend with me.
Like Sam, I got serious at managing my finances.
Made some angel investments, trading.
Unlike him, I didn’t enjoy it - Felt like a chore.
Back to square 1.
“Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.” - Many People.
I realized something very important in this process.
To find my purpose, it’s not enough to know where to live and how to spending more time with friends & family.
I need to know what I genuinely want to learn. Not for a few days or a few months,
but for a few years.
Or more, for the next 5 years. This brings me back to review:
“what DID I learn the last 5 years?”
The last 5 years:
Launched a Corporate Venture Studio partnering w/ Daimler (Mercedes) & other Fortune 500 companies before COVID stopped progress.
Represented as an executive for one of the largest Bitcoin Mining companies in the world, negotiating and researching 8 figure deals.
Deep dive into fan & immersion cooling, electricity cost, hash rate / processing power.
Invested in multi-stage venture fund as 1 of 3 Managing Partners covering North & South America - invested in notable companies like Binance.US and more.
Fundraised for portfolio companies and a new fund.
Organized a 3000+ person event with Mayor of Miami and 100+ speakers in 5 months
Built a 100+ person Fortune 500 executive network, became profitable then tragedy hit my business partner. We couldn’t sustain the operations
Saved a portfolio company from bankruptcy as President / Executive Director and launched 3+ industry leading bridging products but couldn’t hold the lead / sustain the speed of innovation.
Deep dive into practical zero-knowledge proof cryptography, network security, and transfer protocols.
Became fluent in Spanish. Managed teams in Mexico / Argentina / US / Singapore
Hiring & Firing product, technical, sales, marketing, operations, recruiting teams.
Featured on Linkedin as Top Voice for Finance.
Honestly without putting it on paper, I didn’t know.
No wonder I was tired.
But I had a lot of fun. I feel more alive when I’m learning.
The goal of the sabbatical became more and more clear.
On my journey to answer “What’s the purpose of life?”,
I needed to answer these 3 questions:
Where to live for 5 years
How do I have freedom of time and location
What to learn for the next 5 years
See ya tomorrow!
